The transportation required to do repair work at remote locations within complex machinery or apparatus such as technicians or engineers in an oil refinery or on board a ship are constantly faced with the problem of how best to transport the complete set of hand tools needed to do their job. Unlike carpenters or electricians at a construction site, such technicians or engineers frequently need a relatively complete set of hand tools including wrenches, ratchets, hammers, pillars, etc. In addition, the repair person needs tools to be organized for efficient repair work due to the number and variety of the hand tools in the tool set. Not only do such tools present a problem with their combined weight, they are also inherently unsuited for any sort of normal stacking or packing methods to be transported easily in a compact manner. Conventional methods for storing and transporting tools such as tool boxes, while quite appropriate in conventional settings such as automobile garages, etc., have a number of disadvantages in situations discussed above where the technician or engineer is transported to the repair site. First, the individual using the tools may be required to climb ladders or perform other physical acts which require the individual to have both hands free at the time. Further, since conventional tool boxes are designed to use only one hand, transporting heavy hand tools becomes increasingly difficult over any distance using a single-handed tool box. In addition, the tool box is not designed to be oriented in any direction since the tools are usually arrayed in trays. Thus, if the tool box becomes upended or turned upside down, the tools will be scattered throughout the tool box.
Other areas which have attempted to solve similar problems have found an adaptation of a conventional backpack to be quite useful. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,866 to Thomas for transporting medical supplies and U.S. Pat. No. 4,561,576 to Lowe et al. for transporting video equipment. While such applications show some promise, they do not address the specific problem created by transporting hand tools discussed above. That is, their entire transportability for normal packing methods. Thus, the main compartment of a conventional backpack with the adaptation discussed herein would still present many of the same problems presented by a conventional tool box. That is, the tools would be able to shift as the pack is placed in a different orientation and there would be a lack of organization. It is very time consuming and very inconvenient to someone trying to find a specific wrench when dozens, even hundreds of different tools could be involved in a relatively complete set. At the same time, the conventional backpack shows a great deal of promise in an application to solve the problem discussed herein, in that it allows a fairly significant amount of weight to be carried while leaving the individual's hands free.
As stated by the above discussions, there are a number of features that would be desirable for a portable tool kit. It would be desirable for a portable tool kit to incorporate the load-carrying characteristics of a conventional backpack. It would also be desirable for a portable tool kit to enable tools to be transported by an individual while leaving the individual's hands free. In addition, it would also be desirable for a portable tool kit to keep individual tools in place and organized regardless of the orientation of the tool kit. Further, it would be desirable for the tool kit to allow the maximum amount of comfort to the wearer while transporting the tools to a desired repair site.
While the discussion herein relates to portable tool kits, it is not intended that the invention be limited to this situation. It is obvious from the description that follows that the present invention will be useful in other applications with problems common to those described herein.